


Bottle of Smoke

by Super_Secret_Siha



Series: Here Come the Bastards [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Deathclaws, F/M, The Divide (Fallout), Tunnelers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 00:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12899703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Super_Secret_Siha/pseuds/Super_Secret_Siha
Summary: A shadow follows Courier Six into the Divide. Deathclaws happen. Sequel to "The Gambler." Rated M for all the good stuff. I'm bringing this over from ff.net and trying to get this monster out of my head once and for all after a long hiatus. Bethesda owns all.





	1. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fucking Tunnelers.

According to Lord Caesar, datura antivenom was not a chem. Legion boys across the Mojave carried a vial of Courier Six’s all-natural, high potency concoction. Caesar would have known about the fascinating properties of sacred datura root if he’d talked to Salt-Upon-Wounds for longer than five minutes. And he would have found out about the spore plant pods if they had spoken for more than ten. 

Everybody said the White Legs were nothing but scavengers, but they were good for one thing: making stuff with the sacred root. The Courier’s only regret was that she never got the daturana recipe from Salt-Upon-Wounds before assisting Joshua Graham in the tribal leader’s execution.

Six carried half a vodka bottle of antivenom with her into the Divide. It was the last of her private stash, and she was out of little clay vials. The venomous fucking tunneler caught her in the abdomen. Close quarters, too close for flash bangs. Six was still uneasy about unarmed combat, and she was shit at melee. If it hadn’t been for Ed-E, she’d have died before the toxin had any effect.

Datura antivenom tasted different, depending on where you’d acquired the spore plant pods. The Courier’s stash was straight up Zion strain. You could taste the Yao Guai if you knew what you were looking for. Six took a shot of the light green liquid and remembered the echoes of badly-sung country music against canyon walls.

Vulpes Inculta carried two vials of the Courier’s antivenom with him when he followed her into the Divide. One vial contained spore plant pod extract from the Vault 22 strain, and the other from the rare Dionaea Muscipula of Big MT. He didn’t know this, only that the scarcity of datura had raised the cost of Six’s product. Vulpes never quibbled with Six’s prices. The woman charged fairly, and usually warned the buyer when expenses were about to increase.

She really should have murdered House before Caesar had set that hit squad on her. Now, in a show of not fucking around, he periodically had to march a team of idiot boys to their demise. Irritating for everyone involved, but you did what you had to do.

The Good Lord wanted to maintain an interest in Zion. That fucking Courier could be his influence. When he won the dam, the Son of Mars planned to send her back to the Malpais Legate with a message. For now, Vulpes was to discover what the traitor Ulysses wanted from the woman. After that, the Fox had options.

The spy kept a fair distance from the Courier and her flying robot companion, lest the latter, and through it Ulysses, detect him. At sunset, he hid behind one of three or four dead deathclaws along the High Road. Six was causing explosions (again) up ahead. She climbed down off the road to investigate something, her robot trailing behind her.

The dark places along the path behind them were littered with the looted corpses of these creatures. Some had been dissected, Vulpes observed. A new poison in the works, perhaps? A miracle cure for canine hip dysplasia? One wondered if the Courier sometimes sliced them up just for fun.

Where was the robot? The pack had knocked it out, no doubt, and then went after Six. Vulpes had picked up a sniper rifle earlier that day. Nobody would notice if he nudged the situation in the right direction. 

The keen-eyed Fox peered through the scope and targeted the spiky beast furthest from the Courier’s position. They were fast, but they didn’t seem to like the road. Vulpes took a breath, blew it out, and squeezed the trigger. The creature’s head exploded, and Vulpes ducked down behind the dead deathclaw.

A few moments later, he heard the woman scream, “Fucking tunnelers!” The last of the pack fell to ash and the day fell to darkness. Now they had a name.

Fucking tunnelers. Six had attempted every method she could think of to extract something useful out of the fucking tunnelers. The venomous variant secreted toxins through its hide and claws, near as she could tell, but she couldn’t find the gland from which the poison came. The Courier had examined the bodies of two standard variants and a hulking fucking tunneler as well to compare them all. Results had been inconclusive.

From the one who had poisoned her first, Six carried its hide and its fucking teddy bear.

Ed-E bounded back to life and joined her on the road. Good thing, too, because she wasn’t going back down to that shack to retrieve her bouncy little buddy until daylight. And anyway, Six wouldn’t be sticking around here with deathclaws and fucking tunnelers all night. She wanted to travel past the lit-up barrels into what was probably Marked Men territory and find shelter near a campfire.

Problem with that plan was the satchel charges, which she hadn’t figured out how to disarm yet. The first one nearly blew her legs off. Six was quick, though, and jumped back to a safer distance. Got a little singed, but nothing a pack of Fancy Lads and a Sass couldn’t treat.

The Courier laid her bedroll alongside the road, near a lit barrel. No way was she dealing with explosives until tomorrow. The cakes lived up to their name, as they were indeed fancy. The Sass was warm, but Six was used to warm Sass.

She was thinking about radiation and its effect on Marked Men and fucking tunnelers. In the Madre, Six hypothesized, the Cloud and holotechnology had joined forces to create the Ghost People, who were useless but for their cumbersome bear trap claws. What element combined with the Divide’s radiation to produce the unique species that inhabited the region?

The Divide offered up nothing to harvest. Everything had to be scavenged, or purchased from the commissaries. No plants to eat and use, just pre-packaged old world rad chow. That hulking fucking tunneler she’d cut up had a couple of mushrooms on it, but Six couldn’t find any fungus in that cave or any other since she’d followed Ulysses’ deep, compelling voice into hell.

Voice like a big brass bell vibrated through the cracks in her brain. Talked riddles, insinuating that she had done horrible things. It was like he was following her from ahead. Maybe Ulysses knew an alias she used to go by, or maybe he knew the name of the person who’d taught her all the things she had understood immediately upon awakening at Doc Mitchell’s place. Like how to make stims and how to optimize a Pip Boy’s functions. No one in the Mojave had even pretended to recognize who Courier Six was before Benny had left her for dead in the Goodsprings Cemetery, so a clue—any clue—would be a start.

This was why she traversed the relentless terror of the Divide’s barren landscape. She’d left a trail of her own for others to follow in case she never came back.

Six had sold a broc flower to the last commissary she’d visited. She imagined some intrepid traveler walking this path, with a spare xander root and a syringe on his person. He would find the flower, make a stim, and not die just then. The broc flower would give the traveler hope, something in short supply everywhere these days.

Vulpes lay under a car on the road, the better to hide from any potential enemies. Being a spy was not all extravagant parties and intrigue and seduction all the time. Often it was murder on his back. He reached carefully into a pocket and pulled out a small plastic baggie. Inside the baggie was a crushed-up broc flower. 

Clever bitch knew someone would shadow her. Vulpes dragged his thumb over the surface of the baggie and returned it to his pocket. In the car bottom’s rusted-out metal was a hole, and through the hole, the darkness of the Divide. The spy slept lightly, and dreamed of scuttling sounds in the black.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For freedom.

Something had changed in her body since she’d come to this place. Six had been experimenting with the Divide’s radiation to better comprehend what had happened to the Marked Men. She carried plenty of Rad-X and RadAway, so it was perfectly safe, if by “safe,” one meant shooting at deathclaws while standing in a puddle of radioactive sludge.

Pimp Boy 3 Billion tracked her strength and speed within radioactive areas and without them. After the battle, woman and handy accessory agreed that Six became stronger and faster while being exposed to the radiation. The next step was to determine if rad sickness produced any benefits.

Ed-E would have protested this phase of the experiment, but the tin can wasn’t around anymore to beep reasonably at her. That smooth-talking Legion traitor had taken Six’s favorite robot pal, and apparently intended to nuke the Mojave.

Ulysses was going to pay, but not for the nuclear weapons. Six would be lying if she said she didn’t think sometimes that a good bombing might solve all of the Mojave’s problems. The man needed to answer for overriding Ed-E’s autonomy. 

Being an independent robot, her little ball of lightning had the liberty to do whatever sort of thing machines preferred to do. Often that was to fly around and electrocute enemies, much to Six’s glee. The companion protocol allowed some sapient organics to empathize with Ed-E, but obviously not all of them responded well.

Ulysses thought empathy was a weakness, and probably would do until the moment the Courier’s empathy put a laser beam through his fucking head. For freedom.

Maybe she didn’t have to kill him. Maybe he would go for the old doe-eyed amnesiac spiel, but Six didn’t think so. Ulysses didn’t seem to care whether or not she remembered doing the things that she allegedly had done. He wanted revenge, and that was something Six knew a bit about.

You couldn’t quell the incessant burn of vengeance with shtick. Especially not if the vengeance seared the heart of a persuasive and eloquent motherfucker like Ulysses. Only way to beat him without killing him was to speak the truth and hope that it mattered.

Someone was following her. No way had she killed both of those deathclaws on her own, even with the rad boost and the flare gun. For a while, she thought that Boone and Veronica would climb down from the cliffs. Boone would grunt noncommittally, and Veronica would give Six an apple, and together they would best the man who once bore the Courier’s name. 

It was a pleasant fantasy, but the wind was kicking up again. No time for daydreams.

Exhausted from splashing around in rad puddles all afternoon, Six decided it was time to find a place to camp for the night. Up ahead, a pipe waterfall sent fresh water flowing into a pool. As radioactive as the water was, it beat sludge on her boots. Behind the pool, the entrance to a cave loomed. 

Six checked the time. Sunset soon. No fire out here to keep away the nocturnes. Caves were darker yet, and Pimp Boy had no data available for this one. What if the cave turned out to be an old mining shaft infested with fucking tunnelers? That would be a whole thing, and Six didn’t want to get into any more things just before nightfall.

Pimp Boy detected a possible Marked Men post up ahead, and the entrance to Ulysses’ missile silo was not far away from it. Another whole huge ridiculous thing. Had to be a better alternative. One of the nearby trucks might provide suitable shelter for the night.

But then the wind grew so violent, Six could barely stand. She quickly assessed her options, and made her decision.

“All right, Daddy-o,” Six sighed at the modified Pip Boy. “Let’s poke around in a cave.”  
***

The robot was gone. Vulpes wasn’t sure what had happened, but the Courier was alone. He’d found her that afternoon, standing on the edge of a flat rooftop. Her riot helmet had lain at her feet. Pieces of her dark hair had come loose from their bun and were whipping around her head in the furious gale. In an act of defiance, Six had pulled Benny’s golden, wind-resistant lighter from her jacket, and lit a cigarette. For fifteen minutes after that, she’d stood staring northwest, and Vulpes had crouched in the shadows, watching her.

If she’d noticed him there, she hadn’t let on about it. Never did until she was ready anyway.

Caesar had not specified whether Vulpes should kill Ulysses, or bring the traitor back in chains. The Good Lord had instructed him to use his best judgment. 

Clearly, the spy would have to approach the woman—soon, if his intel was correct—and make a deal with her. First, he needed to decide what outcome would produce the most advantageous results for the Legion and for himself. Ulysses, the deserter, subdued, kneeling before the Son of Mars—this scenario would earn Vulpes accolades, and perhaps a promotion. The image alone would be reward enough. However, if Six managed to tame the treacherous dog, she would object vehemently to walking him home on a leash.

She would spout some balderdash about independence and inherent sapient dignity, and Vulpes would fall dead asleep, allowing Ulysses to slit his throat as he collapsed.

He didn’t want a promotion anyway. Best job in the world, this.

The Courier might kill Ulysses straight off, sparing Vulpes any decisions to make. Often, it was difficult to tell whom she would choose to manipulate and whom to murder. (Rumor had it she’d done both to poor Benny.) Ulysses might kill the Courier, and it was in Vulpes’ better interests to mitigate that problem. 

Most likely, Vulpes decided, Six would try to talk to the defector before she killed him. He was interesting, and the Courier hated to do away with interesting things before taking what she could from them. The dog would listen to the woman before he killed her, because he operated under the delusion that he was not a dog. While she distracted Ulysses with her peculiar eloquence, the Fox could strike. The traitor’s head on a pike would win Vulpes a triumph at the very least.

The sniper rifle was out of ammo, so Vulpes discarded it before descending from the cliffs. When he reached the bottom, he surveyed the area. One dead deathclaw, the male, lay directly ahead of him. The female would be on the other side of those stacked buses, near the pool. It would be a stormy evening. The Courier would seek shelter for tonight. Vulpes would afford her the pleasure of his company.

It had been some time since last they had spoken. Contrary to the official story, Six had continued to do business with the Legion well after Caesar had sent the first hit squad after her. She once had told Vulpes that the Legion accounted for one-third of her revenue. The Fox was skeptical of this claim, but he knew their contribution was not insignificant. 

He had met her in rundown shacks and abandoned hotels, and one time in an old-world train station. At first, they’d attempted to behave professionally and do business before tearing each other’s clothes off. After the third such encounter, they had dropped the pretense.

Vulpes Inculta was focused, dogged in pursuit of his prey, and innovative in his tactics. He was not a man who allowed the weaker sex to distract him. Women were a means to an end, and that fucking Courier was no different. Although, every once in a while, Vulpes did find himself reminiscing fondly about their last night together.

_He’s staying at the Ultra-Luxe for a few days, trying to strike a deal with the White Gloves. The woman, Marjorie, is being obstinate, and the man, Mortimer, will not even entertain a conversation with him. Vulpes has never had so much trouble convincing anyone to speak to him. What he cannot do—what he must never do—is go back to Lord Caesar with bad news._

_Vulpes scowls and swipes his hand through his cropped hair. He sits on the bed and begins to unbutton the expensive white shirt he liberated from an unfortunate young man at the Tops. Perhaps he should not be so reluctant to mention cannibalism. After all, the Legion has a reputation around these parts…_

_A knock on his door startles him out of his thoughts. He reaches for the silenced .22 pistol he smuggled into the hotel, and clicks off the safety._

 _“Yes?” he says, rising from the bed and advancing toward the door._

_“Room service,” says a muffled voice behind the door. “A gift from your host.”_

_Vulpes stuffs the pistol into his waistband and opens the door a crack. Before him stands a masked woman dressed in White Glove attire. Her black hair is gathered into a high ponytail, and her arms are marked with familiar tattoos. Vulpes cannot suppress a smile._

_“Mr. Fox,” says Courier Six._

_“What a pleasant surprise,” Vulpes replies. He opens the door wider, and ushers her into his room, closing and locking the door behind him. “What brings you here this evening?”_

_She whirls around to face him, and removes her mask. Her eyes shine with mischief, and her grin is wicked._

_“I’m a White Glove,” she says. “I’ve come to devour your flesh.”_

_He catches her wrist before she can put down the mask._

_“Leave it on,” he commands._


End file.
